Barclays Measuring Client Interest in Crypto Trading

It’s been reported that the UK banking giant Barclays has been gauging clients’ interest in the establishment of a cryptocurrency trading desk.

Insiders have reached out to Bloomberg and reported that so far, only a “preliminary assessment of demand and feasibility” has been made. Bank spokesman Andrew Smith explained that the bank does not have any concrete plans as of yet on the creation of a crypto trading desk:

“Barclays has no plans at this time to build a cryptocurrency trading desk. We constantly monitor developments in the digital currency space and will continue to have a dialog with our clients on their needs and intentions in this market.”

Stand Towards Crypto

Unlike other banking institutions, Barclays does not have a strict regulatory stance against cryptocurrencies. In fact, they had even allowed crypto exchange Coinbase to open an account with them, making Coinbase the first ever cryptocurrency exchange to open a U.K. bank account.

It is still rather unclear as to the banks’ stance on crypto. Analysts from the banking giant had laid out a negative pricing model for bitcoin earlier this week. They were rather critical of the cryptocurrency and treated the it as if it was a “disease”.

Given this, we’d say there’s around a 60% chance that the crypto trading desk would push through. The final decision may very well just boil down to the decisions of the clients and any regulatory restrictions.